Terms of service

These terms are the agreement between you and The Comfort Zone (“we”, “us”, “our”) covering The Comfort Zone: the website, the design studio, and everything you order through them.

By using the site or placing an order you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not order.

How we handle your personal information is set out separately in our privacy policy, which forms part of this agreement.

If you are ordering on behalf of a company, club, school or other organisation, you confirm you are authorised to commit it to these terms, and “you” means both you and that organisation.

• Design — the artwork and layout you produce in the studio, including anything you upload into it and the way you arrange it.
• Print file — the flattened high-resolution image produced from your design for each printed area of a garment.
• Studio — the in-browser design tool.
• Catalogue — the public part of the store where designs published by customers are listed for others to buy or adapt.
• Remix — a new design made by opening a published design in the studio and changing it.
• Print partner — the fulfilment company that prints, packs and posts your order. Today that is Printful.

You must be at least 18, or old enough to enter a binding contract where you live, and able to pay with a payment method you are authorised to use. If you are under 18, please ask a parent or guardian to place the order.

You must not use the store if sanctions or trade controls prohibit us from supplying you, or if we have previously closed your account for a breach of these terms.

You can order as a guest. If you create an account, keep your password to yourself and tell us promptly at ilyaastoefy@proton.me if you think someone else has access to it. You are responsible for orders placed through your account unless you told us it was compromised beforehand.

Please keep your email address and delivery address current. We are not responsible for a parcel delivered correctly to an out-of-date address you gave us.

The studio runs in your browser. You choose a garment, arrange text, images and shapes on it, and see a preview rendered on a photograph of the real product.

A few things worth knowing:

• Your draft is saved on your own device, not on our servers. Clearing your browser data, or using a different browser or device, will lose it.
• Nothing is uploaded to us until you add to cart or ask for a realistic preview. At that point your design is flattened into print files and stored so the order can be produced.
• There is no minimum order. One piece is fine.
• The studio needs a modern browser. We support current versions of the mainstream browsers and cannot guarantee older ones.

We may change, improve or withdraw features of the studio. If a change would prevent a design you have already saved from being reproduced, we will say so where we reasonably can — but a saved draft is not a guarantee of future availability.

The preview is generated from your actual print files on photographs of the actual garment, so it is a genuine representation. It is not a proof, and it is not a colour-matched sample. Garment printing has real, physical tolerances, and these are the ones that apply:

• Placement, standard printing. The print can sit up to about half an inch (13 mm) away from where the preview shows it.
• Placement, all-over print. All-over items are cut and sewn: your design is printed onto flat fabric panels first, then cut and assembled into the garment. Placement can shift by up to about an inch (25 mm) around seams, hems and edges.
• Unprinted areas on all-over items. Anywhere you leave unprinted stays the base fabric colour. Small unprinted streaks or creases can appear near seams and folds. This is most visible on dark designs and is an expected outcome of the process, particularly on cotton.
• Colour on cotton. Cotton is printed with water-based pigment inks, which give a softer, slightly vintage finish. Colours can read more muted than on your screen.
• Colour generally. No two screens are calibrated alike, and fabric, ink and lighting all shift the final shade. Screen colour is a guide. If an exact colour match matters — a brand colour, for instance — order a single sample first.
• Image resolution. The studio warns you when an image you have placed is too low-resolution to print crisply. If you go ahead anyway, we print the file you gave us, and a soft or pixelated result is not a defect.

Results within these tolerances are not faults and are not grounds for a replacement or refund. Anything outside them is — see clause 19.

You keep every right you already hold in your design. Nothing in these terms transfers ownership of it to us.

So that we can actually make what you ordered, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to:

• store your design and the print files produced from it;
• reproduce and adapt it as printing requires — resizing, repositioning, flattening layers, converting colour, and preparing it for the press;
• print it on the items you ordered; and
• pass the print files to our print partner for the same purposes.

That licence lasts as long as we need it to produce your order, support it, reprint it under a claim, and keep the records the law requires. It does not let us do anything else.

We do not use your artwork to promote the store, sell it to anyone else, or license it onward — unless you publish it to the catalogue under clause 11, or give us permission in writing.

You may not put anything into a design that:

• infringes someone else’s copyright, trade mark, design right, or right of publicity — including logos, band and team marks, characters, film and game artwork, stock images you are not licensed for, and typefaces you do not have a licence to embed;
• uses a real person’s name, likeness or signature without their permission;
• is unlawful, defamatory, or discloses someone else’s private information;
• incites violence or hatred against people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or sexual orientation;
• promotes terrorism or a violent extremist organisation, or glorifies a mass-casualty attack;
• sexualises children in any way;
• constitutes harassment of, or a threat to, an identifiable person;
• impersonates a business, public body or emergency service, or would pass off counterfeit goods as genuine;
• we are prohibited from printing by law or by our print partner’s own content rules.

Fan art, parody and commentary sit in genuinely grey territory. We are not your legal adviser and we do not vet designs for infringement before printing — the responsibility is yours under clause 9. We may refuse to print anything we consider a clear breach of this clause, and we will refund an order we refuse on that basis.

Each time you order or publish, you confirm that:

• you own the design, or have every licence and permission needed to have it printed on the products you selected and, if you are publishing, to have it offered to others;
• it does not breach clause 8;
• any personal information inside it — a name, a photograph, a team roster — is there with the permission of the people concerned; and
• the information you gave us at checkout is accurate.

These are promises you make to us, and clause 29 sets out what follows if one of them turns out to be wrong.

The studio includes a clipart library and a set of typefaces so you can design without supplying your own assets.

• Clipart. The library is public-domain material, dedicated under Creative Commons Zero. You may use it in your designs, including designs you sell through the catalogue. Where an item’s licence differs, the licence recorded against that item governs.
• Typefaces. The studio’s fonts are open-source faces served by Google Fonts and used under their own licences. Your text is rendered into your print file; you are not being granted the font software itself.
• Garment photographs and templates. Product photographs, mockups and print templates belong to us or our print partner. They are there to help you visualise your design and may not be extracted for other use.

Using our clipart or fonts does not give you any exclusive rights in them. Another customer may use the very same clipart in their own design, and neither of you can stop the other.

Publishing is optional. There is a checkbox on the review screen, switched off by default. Nothing you make is ever listed unless you tick it.

What you grant us if you do. For as long as the design stays listed, a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to display it and its garment previews on the store and in marketing for the store, to print and sell it to other customers on the products we offer, and to allow other customers to open it in the studio and make their own versions of it.

What happens next. Your submission goes into a queue and stays private until a person reviews it. If approved, it becomes a product on the store. If you gave a display name, it is shown as the credit.

Payment. We do not currently pay creators for designs sold through the catalogue. We record who made each design and what it was adapted from so that a revenue share could be introduced later, but no such scheme exists today and nothing here promises one, guarantees a rate, or entitles you to a share of past sales. If we introduce one, we will publish its terms and it will apply from that point forward.

Withdrawing. Email ilyaastoefy@proton.me and we will unlist the design. Orders already placed will still be produced and delivered, and existing remixes by other people are not withdrawn with it.

Publishing does not transfer ownership. You can still use your own design however you like, including selling it elsewhere.

Published designs can be opened in the studio and changed. When that happens we record the chain — which design it came from, and the original it ultimately descends from — so credit follows the work.

If you publish a remix:

• you may not present it as wholly your own original work;
• the licence in clause 11 applies to your remix, and the earlier creators’ licences continue to apply to their contributions;
• you gain no rights in the original beyond making and publishing your remix; and
• if the original is removed because it infringed someone’s rights, we may remove remixes of it too.

We review designs submitted for publication before they appear, and we may reject a submission without giving a reason. Rejection is not a judgement about your artwork’s legality — it may simply not fit the catalogue.

We may unlist or delete a published design at any time, and we will normally tell the creator why. Reasons include a rights complaint, a breach of clause 8, a print-quality problem, or a legal requirement.

If you believe a design infringes your rights, email ilyaastoefy@proton.me with: the design or product address, what right you hold and evidence of it, what specifically infringes it, your contact details, and a statement that you believe in good faith the use is unauthorised. We will review it promptly and remove the design while we do, where that is the sensible course. We will tell the creator, who may respond.

Prices are shown on the product page and in the studio before you add to cart. Where a product charges more for printing additional areas of the garment, the studio shows the breakdown before you commit.

Whether tax is included in the displayed price, and which currency you are charged in, are shown at checkout. The total there is the total you pay us.

We may change prices at any time, but never after you have paid: the price confirmed at checkout is the price for that order. If a price or product detail is obviously wrong — a pricing error — we may cancel the order and refund you in full rather than fulfil it, and we will tell you promptly.

International orders. Import duties, customs charges and local sales taxes may be payable on delivery in your country. Those are yours to pay and are not included in what you paid us, unless checkout says otherwise. We cannot advise on what will be charged, and a parcel refused or returned because a duty was unpaid is treated under clause 18.

Adding an item to your cart is not an order. Completing checkout is your offer to buy.

The order confirmation email acknowledges we received it. A contract between us forms when we accept the order by sending your item to production — usually within a few hours of payment.

We may decline an order before that point. Reasons include: the item is unavailable, we could not process payment, the design breaches clause 8, we cannot deliver to your address, the price was wrong, or we suspect fraud. If we decline, we refund you in full and nothing further is owed either way.

Production starts quickly, which is what makes made-to-order possible — and it is also what limits changes.

Email ilyaastoefy@proton.me with your order number as soon as you can. If the file has not yet gone to print we will cancel or amend it and refund the difference. Once it has, we cannot: the garment is already being made to your specification and cannot be sold to anyone else.

We will always tell you honestly which side of that line your order is on.

Items are made after you order, so there are two stages: production, then transit.

Production typically takes 2 to 5 business days. Transit depends on where you are and the service used, and is shown at checkout. You will receive tracking when the parcel is dispatched.

These are estimates in good faith, not guarantees, and they are not contractual delivery dates. Larger orders, unusual garments, peak periods, and delays at a carrier or customs can all extend them. If you need something by a specific date, ask us before you order and we will tell you honestly whether it is achievable.

An order may be dispatched in more than one parcel — different garments are sometimes produced at different facilities — at no extra cost to you.

Risk in the goods passes to you on delivery. Where you are a business buyer, ownership passes when we have received payment in full.

• Nothing arrived. If tracking shows no movement, or delivery is well past the estimate, contact us and we will chase the carrier and put it right — by replacement or refund.
• Tracking says delivered but you do not have it. Please check with your household, neighbours and the carrier’s local depot first, then tell us within 21 days of the estimated delivery date, so we can raise it with the carrier and our print partner while both still hold records.
• Wrong address. If the address you entered was incomplete or incorrect and the parcel is lost or returned as a result, we can produce a replacement but will have to charge for it. Made-to-order items cannot be resold.
• Refused or unclaimed. If a parcel is refused, or unclaimed and returned to sender, we will refund the item price less the cost of shipping and any charges the carrier levied on the return.

If something is wrong with what arrived, tell us within 30 days of delivery at ilyaastoefy@proton.me, with your order number and photographs showing the problem. Photographs matter: we and our print partner assess claims from them, and it saves you posting anything back.

We will replace the item free of charge, and if a replacement is not possible we will refund it in full. You will not normally need to return the faulty item.

Covered: a print that does not match the design you approved; ink, alignment or quality defects; damage in transit; a garment flaw; and receiving a different item, colour or size from the one on your order.

Not covered: normal variation within the tolerances in clause 6; a design you approved and have changed your mind about; a size you selected that does not fit — measurements are on each product page, so please check them; soft print from a low-resolution image you were warned about; and ordinary wear, or damage from washing against the care instructions.

Nothing in this clause limits your statutory rights. If you are a consumer, you have legal rights where goods are faulty, not as described, or not fit for purpose, and those rights apply regardless of anything said here.

Every item is printed to your own design after you order it, and cannot be resold to anyone else. For that reason we do not accept returns or exchanges because you have changed your mind, chosen the wrong size, or no longer want the design.

If you are a consumer in the United Kingdom or the European Union, the 14-day right to cancel a distance purchase does not apply to goods made to your specification or clearly personalised. That is a statutory exception, not a term we have imposed. Anything on the store that is not custom-printed — a plain stock item, if we offer one — is still covered by the usual right to cancel.

Your rights over faulty, misdescribed or unfit goods are untouched, and clause 19 explains how to use them. If you are unsure about sizing, order one piece before committing to a set.

Bulk and team orders are welcome. Add each size you need — each goes into the cart as its own line, and your design stays loaded in the studio between them. Each size is priced per line at the unit price shown in the studio, and the total shown before anything is added to the cart is the total the cart charges. We do not currently apply a volume discount; if we introduce one, it will be applied at checkout and shown there.

Two pieces of practical advice we would rather give than argue about later: order a single sample first when the run is large or the colour has to be exact, and check every name and number on a personalised set before you approve it. A misspelling we printed faithfully from your design is not a defect.

Large orders may take longer than the estimate in clause 17, and may arrive in several parcels. If you need a firm date, agree it with us in writing before ordering.

Payment is taken in full at checkout, by the provider you choose inside the checkout. If a payment is reversed or fails after we have accepted the order, we may cancel it and stop production.

If you think a charge is wrong, please contact us first. We would much rather fix a genuine problem than defend a dispute. Raising a chargeback on an order we produced correctly and delivered costs us the item, the fee and the time — and where a claim is not made in good faith, we may recover our costs and decline future orders.

You may use the site and the studio to design and buy apparel. You may not:

• use our upload endpoint as general-purpose file hosting, or to store anything that is not artwork for an order;
• work around the rate limits on publishing, or submit designs in automated bulk;
• scrape, copy or republish the catalogue, our product data, or other customers’ designs and previews;
• attempt to reach our moderation or administrative endpoints, or use credentials that are not yours;
• use our image proxy to fetch anything other than the images it exists to serve;
• probe, scan or test the security of our systems without our written permission, or interfere with their operation;
• reverse engineer, decompile or extract the source of the studio beyond what applicable law permits; or
• introduce malware, or use the store to send unsolicited messages.

We monitor for abuse and may rate-limit, block or suspend access to keep the service working for everyone. Serious or repeated abuse may be reported to the authorities.

The store, the studio, its code and interface, our name and logo, our product photography and our written content belong to us or our licensors. These terms give you no right to use any of it beyond using the store as intended.

You may not copy the studio’s code or interface, present the store as your own, or use our name or logo without written permission.

Parts of the store depend on other companies: Shopify for the storefront and checkout, our print partner for production and fulfilment, cloud providers for hosting and storage, and content networks for fonts and libraries. Their availability is outside our control, and an interruption at one of them can interrupt us.

Links to other websites are for convenience. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content or their terms.

We aim to keep the store and the studio available, but we do not promise uninterrupted service. We may suspend access for maintenance, updates or emergency repairs, and will try to give notice where the interruption is planned.

The studio depends on your browser and your connection. A design lost because your browser data was cleared, or a session interrupted mid-edit, is not something we can recover — drafts are stored on your device, as clause 5 explains.

We will supply the goods you ordered with reasonable care and skill, and they will match the design you approved subject to the tolerances in clause 6.

Beyond that, and to the extent the law allows, we provide the site and the studio “as is”. We do not warrant that they will be error-free, that a preview will match the finished garment exactly, that a design will be free of third-party rights, or that the catalogue will remain available in any particular form.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits any warranty, guarantee or right that the law does not permit us to exclude. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights stand alongside these terms.

Some liability cannot be limited, and we do not attempt to: death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, and anything else the law says cannot be excluded.

Subject to that:

• our total liability arising from an order is limited to the amount you paid for that order;
• we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or anticipated savings;
• we are not liable for losses caused by a delay, where we told you the delivery time was an estimate — if you need a guaranteed date, agree it with us in writing first;
• we are not liable for a claim brought against you over artwork you did not have the right to use; and
• we are not liable for loss of a design draft stored in your own browser.

If you are a consumer, we are responsible for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breaking this contract or failing to use reasonable care, and this clause does not reduce that.

If you are a business, the limits above apply in full, and we are not liable for any loss arising from your use of the store for any commercial purpose.

If you break clause 8 or clause 9 — by uploading something you did not have the right to use, or something unlawful — you agree to cover the losses, costs, damages and reasonable legal fees we incur as a result, including a claim brought by a rights holder or a person named or depicted in your design.

We will tell you promptly about any such claim, give you the opportunity to be involved in defending it, and not settle it in a way that binds you without your consent. This clause does not apply to anything we did wrong ourselves.

You can stop using the store at any time, and ask us to close your account.

We may suspend or close your access if you break these terms, if we are required to by law, or if your use of the service exposes us or other customers to risk. Where it is reasonable to do so, we will warn you first and give you the chance to put it right.

Ending access does not affect an order we have already accepted, which we will still fulfil, and it does not affect the clauses that are meant to survive: your licences to us for designs already produced or published, clause 29, and clauses 28 and 32.

We may change these terms — because the law changes, or the service does. The current version is always on this page, with the date at the top.

The terms that apply to an order are the ones in force when you placed it. A change never applies retrospectively to an order already accepted. Where a change materially affects you, we will give reasonable notice before it takes effect.

These terms, and any dispute arising from them or from an order, are governed by the law of the jurisdiction in which we are established, and its courts have jurisdiction.

If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory consumer law of your country of residence, nor of your right to bring proceedings in your local courts where the law gives you that right.

Please talk to us before starting a formal dispute. Email ilyaastoefy@proton.me setting out what has gone wrong and what you would like done; most things are resolved that way, and quickly.

• Whole agreement. These terms, the privacy policy and your order confirmation are the whole agreement between us on their subject, and replace anything said beforehand. This does not limit your remedies for a fraudulent statement.
• Severability. If a clause turns out to be unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a term straight away, we do not lose the right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these terms without our consent. We may transfer ours to a company that acquires the business, provided your rights are not reduced.
• Third parties. Only you and we can enforce these terms.
• Events beyond our control. Neither of us is liable for a failure caused by something genuinely outside our control — natural disaster, war, epidemic, industrial action, carrier or utility failure, or a government act. We will tell you promptly and, if the delay becomes substantial, you may cancel any unfulfilled part of the order for a full refund.
• Language. These terms are written in English, and the English version governs if they are translated.

Email ilyaastoefy@proton.me, or write to:

The Comfort Zone
South Africa, Lansdowne, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

For a problem with an order, please include your order number — it lets us find everything in one go.